Best thing John Fox could say to Bears is 'goodbye'

The play, Tarik Cohen explained, “was designed for me to get to the left somehow.”

So he ran right instead. And backward. Waaaaay backward.

Not until he had retreated 16 yards did he turn and head to his left.

“It was my job to set the defense up,” Cohen said of his 61-yard punt return for a touchdown during Sunday's 15-14 loss to San Francisco, a feat that teammate Michael Burton joked actually covered 150 yards. “They were really coming aggressively, so that’s why I had to take it that far back to finally turn around and get back to the left side.”

Cohen worried for a second that it wouldn’t work. “But like my coaches always tell me, I had to trust my speed, just go with the plan and go back left,” he said.

Just because he trusted what his coaches told him doesn’t mean he listened to their instructions.

And maybe, just maybe, the Bears are going backward now so they can go forward in the near future.

That’s what the Cubs did after they first hired Theo Epstein. That’s what the White Sox are doing now, after trading many of their better players before the 2017 season. That’s what the 3-18 Bulls are doing after trading Jimmy Butler, figuring a high draft pick after a painful season is better than just missing the playoffs every year, or just making the playoffs only to get bounced in the first round.

That is most definitely not the Bears' plan.

Tanking doesn't work in the NFL. Maybe because the season is so short at 16 games, not 162. Or maybe it’s because careers are even shorter in such a physical game. The Bears are 3-8 this year and were 3-13 last year, but they are desperately trying to win.

“The guys in that locker room care,” rookie quarterback Mitch Trubisky said. “We fought on the field and they’re putting their bodies on the line upfront protecting for me. We’re not just doing this for nothing; we’re doing it for a purpose.”

But the Bears should also be learning from all this losing. If nothing else, they should have learned they need a new coach. And maybe a new general manager. John Fox and Ryan Pace are 12-31 together in their three years in Chicago. San Francisco (2-10) seems in a better spot than the Bears mostly because their coach, Kyle Shanahan, and GM, John Lynch, are both in their first year in town.

New guys don't always work, either. Mark Hatley, Jerry Angelo, Phil Emery, Ryan Pace — were any of them a better GM than his failed predecessor? Nor did the Bears strike coaching gold the last 25 years with Dave Wannstedt, Dick Jauron, Lovie Smith, Marc Trestman and John Fox. Smith was the best of that lot in Chicago, but is 13-43 since leaving the Bears so, no, keeping him was no answer.

Sometimes when you go backward you never do turn around. But Tarik Cohen's only chance to make a play Sunday was to retreat hard to give himself room to eventually get headed in the right direction. The Bears as an entire organization seem to be in that same desperate situation.

“I wish I had something better to tell them,” Fox said after talking to his players after another tough loss.

How about “goodbye"?

The Bears might have the pieces to start building a winner, but we will never know unless they have someone else putting those pieces together.